Anubha Kakroo
How did you get about writing this book?
Sudipto Das
[I ponder] what’s that I’ve done, apart from my child, which is, might be, my genes, and [which] I can claim… only I could have produced, and apart from [which] nothing else could have happened. That’s where [someday] I came back home, and I thought, “What can I do? What talent do I have?” Then I thought, “Forget about talent. At [the] least, I can start writing.” I’ve been writing from childhood. I used to write in Bengali a lot. So, I thought, “Whether I have any talent or not, what’s wrong in giving it a shot?” That’s how I thought I would write. I was very interested in Indian history, Indian culture. So, I thought I would write about that. My inspiration was Harrison Ford – let me tell you [why]. Harrison Ford used to be the Indiana Jones. Before Dan Brown came into [the] picture, Harrison Ford used to be the cool, sleek and sexy archaeologist. There’s an interesting anecdote. The only other archaeologist I’d come across till then was in a movie called Guide. Young people here wouldn’t even know about the movie. It’s one of the most popular movies made by Dev Anand, and it was released in 1965. In that movie, Waheeda Rahman was the wife of an archaeologist. The first scene is like this: A middle aged guy, old enough, is digging something in a temple, and his just married beautiful and sexy wife Waheeda Rahman is alone at home. In the very next scene she is seen dancing with Dev Anand. Few scenes later she runs away with Dev Anand. The image of an archaeologist has been [always] like this in India. A bald old man would dig around somewhere and his wife would run away with someone handsome. But Harrison Ford changed the idea that historians and archaeologists need not be so boring that their wives would run away with away with someone. That’s where I got this courage that history and archaeology could be presented in a better form. Now-a-days, everything is about packaging. Anything you package well is good. That was the inspiration. That’s how I thought that my characters would be also interested in history and archaeology, but they need not be old. A young person could also be interested in history and languages. And that’s how I started writing about Indian history. Indiana Jones and Dan Brown deal with a part of the European history or Christian history. So, I thought, “Why not Indian history, which is even larger and older than that?” That’s the background.
Anubha
While I was reading the book, I found there is a lot of factual research in the book. As an architect, I saw you’ve touched upon design, whether it is in architecture, or textile, carpets, and also the scripts – the Brahmi script, the Sharada script, which being a Kashmiri is of a particular interest to me, the Pali and Sanskrit of course. What prompted all this? This requires a whole lot of research. How did you research this? Did the research feed into the narrative or the narrative fed into the research?
Sudipto
Well, I didn’t do any organized way of research. It’s so happened that while writing the previous book I was reading a lot about Ancient Indian history, about the Aryan history, about the Sanskrit language, [and] how it evolved. Then I figured out that, Indians are very bad keepers of history. We never recorded our own history and we allowed everyone else in the world to write about our history and talk about our history. That’s the reality – we didn’t write our history. So, what should we do now? While reading about Ancient [Indian] history I came across an article which mentioned that the only source of Ancient Indian history is the Rig Veda, which is a religious book. I started reading [The] Rig Veda. [The] first thing I realized [was] that whenever a book gets the tag of a religious book, or something theological, that’s the death of the book. [The] Rig Veda is the first book written by the humanity, close to 3000 years back. And [the reason] why nobody reads Rig Veda is that it’s a religious book. The moment it gets that tag, you will never read. You would never read [the] Bible and talk about the language of the book. You never talk how many similes were used, or how many alankars were there in [the] Bible. It’s the same thing for [the] Rig Veda too. No one talks about the literary value of the book, or the historical value of the book. That’s where I realized that lot of our history has been preserved not by conventional historical things, but through very unconventional things like religious books. And that’s where, slowly, I came across…, carpets. The designs you see in the Persian carpets, each design that you see is more than 3000 years old, and every design of the Persian or Kashmiri carpet has wealth of history. And they have preserved some intricate things about history. And likewise, architecture. Just by seeing the architecture, you can know a lot [about] who made those architecture. So that’s how I was interested in finding history from non-historical sources, non-archaeological sources. That’s why the carpets…, the Brahmi scripts, or anything that you mentioned, came up.
Anubha
Next what I wanted to [tell] you is – now that we have the book in hand – the book is reasonably violent. It starts with gruesome murders and rape. That’s a very very violent thing. We all technically abhor violence. Is it something that the genre demands? Or, is it a literary device to put the audience in a certain frame of mind? If that’s so, then what’s the frame of mind you wanted the audience to be in? The book is quite violent.
Sudipto
If the beginning of a book has violence or something little dark, it does have some impact on the reader. It may have a negative impact also, but that’s the chance I’ve taken. I thought, a very negative thing to start with – it can create some curiosity among the readers. But having said that, it’s not that I [went] out of the way… and I inserted these things like item numbers in Hindi movies – some [narrative] is going on, and suddenly you have Sunny Leone dancing. My intention was not to do an item number with the violence. It was a part of the narrative. Talking about the form of violence which you’ve read about and heard [about] Iraq, Syria – this entire thing of Islamic state, the sort of fundamentalism that they have used…, for no reason, to perpetrate a worst form of violence among a lot of people. Islamic State pays a big role in the book. What I did is that I used some images I’ve already seen or read about… Iraq and Syria – I just changed the names of the characters. I just reproduced the similar thing, in the context of my book. [The violence] is both factual and a tool to create some curiosity among the readers.
Anubha
You talk about the ISIS and the Islamic State very boldly. And in today’s context, do you think you felt the need to integrate [it] in the book, or is it that [it’s] so much around you that it came on its own? Why did you feel the need to integrate this in the book?
Sudipto
I felt that the way we read history, or the way we read about incidents happening around the world, there’s always a sort of agenda behind anything someone writes. When someone covers an incident, she’s prejudiced by some agenda, by her leanings – whether she’s right inclined or left. Depending on that, the narrative [would] change. Same with history, I believe. Indians have been bad keepers of history. We allowed everyone in the world to talk about our history, and everybody writes with [her] own agenda. And this entire thing about the Islamic State, Taliban and this entire movement – the reporting has been always very biased. People write either from the right side of the spectrum or the left. The real narrative was lost. I wanted to bring out [a] certain thing, as it is. And while I talked about the Islamic State, I’ve also talked about Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, the Frontier Gandhi. We all have heard about him. He also hails from Peshawar – the place is now a hot bed of terrorism. I’ve a full chapter on some incidents around Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, who technically speaking, talked about nonviolence before Mahatma Gandhi, and very interestingly, at the same place Peshawar, which is now known for all violent things. My idea was to bring out certain facts and give some data points to [the] readers, so that they [could] read more and figure out what is right and what is wrong, the real fact. It’s all about interpretation of religion. Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan used the same religion to preach nonviolence which the Islamic State is interpreting or misinterpreting in a different way to spread violence. I wanted to bring out the both. It’s not only the Islamic State, I talked about fundamentalism, violence inspired by other religions also. It’s just to show the futility about menace about the entire religious fundamentalism or violence in the name of religion.
Apart from Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar being born in Peshawar, we don’t even think about Peshawar. We can’t even go there. Being an Indian and going to Pakistan and that to Peshawar – you may not even get visa. Interesting thing about Peshawar is that…, [it] used to be at the center of the Silk Route, at the center of the East-West and North-South corridor of the Silk Route. The East-West corridor, which is from the Far-East, from Vietnam – the entire GT Road was a part of it – you go to Peshawar, and from there you cross the Khyber Pass and from there you enter the Central Asia. That’s the East West corridor of the Silk Route. Then there’s the North-South corridor. From Karachi, you go through Peshawar, through the Karakorum Highway – you go to China and further north. So, Peshawar is at the center of these two routes. Even now they have a market called the Qissa Khawani Bazar, which in English means the Story Tellers’ market. The market has been there for… more than 2000 years. It may be one of the oldest surviving markets in the world. Why is it known as Qissa Khawani Bazar? The idea was that, people would come from various parts of the world [and] anyone who would be coming there would be getting [her] own stories. That’s how the name came about. You come and barter not only your goods, but you barter your stories, your emotion, your sentiments. Someone had to talk about Peshawar. Bitching about Pakistan is fine – they have done certain things politically which we can’t forget – but not everything about their country is bad. Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka – everything in a consolidated manner, form the Indian subcontinent. And culturally, we are all same. We all have the same history, whatever may be the politics. Someone had to talk about that. Peshawar is known for Buddhist monasteries [also]. Lots of Buddhism thrived in Peshawar for a very long time. All these inspired me a lot to talk about Peshawar and a country which has a totally different connotation with Indian context. We may think everyone there is a terrorist. But it’s not. Certain sections of that country have become terrorist. That has got lot of bad name to them.
Anubha
Tell us about Aryabhata, the mathematician, and the role that he plays in the book. After all the book is called The Aryabhata Clan.
Sudipto
What role he plays? if I’ve to tell that, then I’ve to divulge a lot about the climax of the book. I won’t say what role Aryabhata plays in the book. But I can certainly say about Aryabhata [in general]. Aryabhata may be the second global Indian after Gautam Buddha who had such a big impact on the world. Buddha, we all know [about his ideas about peace and nonviolence. He has made a huge mark on the world, socially and politically. We all know about that. We talk about Yoga, and so many things about India. But the impact of Aryabhata is often lost in the narrative. Just to give you a small example: Aryabhata is contemporary to Kalidasa. He lived around 1500 years ago. Thousand years later, when Amir Khusrau was writing the first Hindu poem – he is often credited to have written the first Hindi poem – he also mentioned the impact of Hindustan, and he [implicitly] mentioned about Aryabhata and the impact of the decimal place value system. The entire mathematics is around the place value system. We’ve read since kindergarten – 10, 100, 1000, everything increases of decreases in orders of 10s. The entire concept is so natural to us. Aryabhata didn’t invent the decimal place value system. But he was the first person who popularized it and theorized it in a proper scientific manner. From Aryabhata it went to Arab when a lot of Arabic mathematicians were translating Indian works to Arabic, and from there it went to Europe – it was translated to Latin. Someone commented that if there were no decimal place value system, there wouldn’t have been any Newton too. All the scientific advancements happened 15th century onward – Newton, Laplace, whatever you’ve read in mathematics, trigonometry, calculus, everything was born only after Aryabhata’s place value system had been transported to Europe via Arab. So, from that point of view, I think, the impact of Aryabhata on modern science is immense. Without Aryabhata there wouldn’t be computer, there wouldn’t be Newton, no gravitational laws, we wouldn’t have anything to read in our physics books. Kids would have been happier. They would have lot less to learn. But the world would have been a much different place to live in.
Anubha
You’ve talked about lot of interesting professions in your book. Linguistic paleontology, archaeology, epigraphy and all of that. And of course, you’ve mentioned how you got inspired by two very popular films. Do books also promote alternate career choices? I frankly didn’t know much about linguistic paleontology, before I read this book. But I see that it’s a fully developed discipline of its own. And then also connected to that, on professional front…, how do these, how does book-reading effect the life of a professional, life an entrepreneur like yourself. What do book-reading and book mean to you?
Sudipto
People are reading lesser and lesser books. At least in our areas, in my technical area, people are more fond of reading management boos, or might be self help books. In general, I’ve seen people thinking – why we should read literature, history, novels? It’s vert paradoxical. I just read an article – someone did a survey of the top 100 richest people in the world. And the only thing common between them was that all those 100 people are vociferous readers. When you talk about the 100 richest people – rich not because of the fact that their parents have dropped the wealth on them – they are rich because they are successful. Each of these 100 people is first generation wealth creator. Like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Page of Google or Warren Buffet. What this article says is that, anyone who has been successful, or who has attained the maximum success in [her] life, one thing common between [each of] them is that, all are readers, and they read everything in the world, from history, literature, culture, and they are not restricted by reading things from their own domain. Warren Buffer is quoted in this article [that] whatever time he is awake, he spends 80% of [that] time in reading, and that also not reading or checking the stock prices of the things he has bought. So, I think that says everything. If you don’t read, you can’t get success anywhere, whether you’re an engineer or whatever it is. One funny example. Only difference between Obama and Trump is perhaps that Obama read more books and Trump didn’t. And again the same thing – between Bush and Bill Clinton, I think, Clinton is a much more well read person than Bush. And you know who’s a better leader. Between the last four presidents that you had in the US, you know Clinton and Obama were better in many aspects form Trump and Bush. And then, again if you come to India, Jawaharlal Nehru was an amazing writer and he used to read a lot of books. Same with Indira Gandhi. Everybody knows she used to read a lot. PV Narasimha Rao knew 13 languages, and everybody knows how amazing an editor of books he was. Atal Behari Vajpayee was a poet himself. Winston Churchill was a writer himself. Any leader…, who doesn’t read, is a devil. Saddam Hussein might not have read many books – I don’t know. I don’t have that information. If you are doing a normal 8-5 job, then you may survive without reading anything. But if you want to be leader – I don’t know whether anyone can be a leader without being a reader first. First you should be reader, and then a leader.
Anubha
One last thing that I want to ask you – what’s your take on this trend of historical novels, or writing about or writing through history, or reading abut history. Say for example, Dan Brown you mentioned, and even in our Indian context we have a lot of authors. So, this historical, mythological novels genre – what’s your take on it and is it something, I mean, a trend?
Sudipto
History is an unending source of knowledge, and an unending source of information. I think no other thing will provide you with so much information and content for writing. But then again, a I told, history, the way it has been presented to us, it was not well packaged. I believe recently with Dan Brown, and with Amish, with Ashwin Sanghi, lot of books are being written on mythology and history. And they are very well packaged. If that is creating some more interest among the readers, about any history – whether it’s Christian history what Dan Brown does, or what Indiana Jones would have done, and whether it’s Amish, with his Shiva trilogy and then Ram – [this is all very good]. Obviously, I think, a teen ager being interested in Shiva, about some mythology around Shiva or Rama or Sita – this is all very good. Otherwise that kid wouldn’t even have bothered to know about Indian mythologies. Any author is packaging it in a little better form. And I think when it comes to packaging, [I must say this]. In my profession, I deal with chip design and electronics – [I know] technologically iPhone was 10 years behind Nokia. But then, what made iPhone a success is just the packaging. Nobody cares about what you say. It’s how. If packaging is better, it sells more. And there’s’ no harm in that. I believe, Nokia shouldn’t feel that [despite] a better product they died. They failed to package, and they died. That’s fine. If history is packaged well and if it sells and if people are inspired to read more, I think it’s a very good thing.
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